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Category talk:Savants
What belongs here? I read the description and am still not clear on how we're defining savant. Or is this a story-specific category? Turtle Fan 04:59, February 28, 2011 (UTC) :The term comes from the specific story but my intention was to include a broader group much as we discussed under Mages. It would be pre-scientific scholars who, in a fantasy setting, do not use magic. It might also apply to historical figures such as e.g. Archimedes. If you have a better name for the cat, we could still make Savants a story specific sub-cat of the other cat since there will be more than three from None So Blind. ML4E 22:00, February 28, 2011 (UTC) ::Ah, okay. I suspected it would include people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Al-Ghazzali, Thomas Aquinas, and so on. I thought there might be some added criterion I was missing, however. I'm not crazy about the name but I'm blanking on any other suggestions, and I'm okay with going ahead as is. Turtle Fan 00:02, March 1, 2011 (UTC) :The more I think about it, the less I like my idea of including historicals. The five you listed are all philosophers among other things while Archimedes would be a mathematician and possibly engineer. I think I will use savants for only the story specific characters plus any other stories HT may use the term. Also, some of the savants in NSB would fit our existing scientist categories so I will put them into those as well as savant. ML4E 20:19, March 1, 2011 (UTC) Delete? I think this category is useless and misleading. The savants in "None So Blind" are just your typical Turtledove mages, and should be classed as such.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 10:15, May 14, 2018 (UTC) :I'll defer to those who actually read it. TR (talk) 14:16, May 14, 2018 (UTC) :Created seven years ago so I don't recall what I was thinking or the story very well. However, Relander was a map-maker and did not seem to be a magic user. Hence one out of two wouldn't be classified as a "Mage". My impression was that "Savants" were more akin to scientists or naturalists, to use an old fashioned term. This is a sub-cat of "Scientists" and not "Mages" for this reason. ML4E (talk) 15:49, May 14, 2018 (UTC) :Right, we have Sunila categorized as a "Mage" so I must have had a reason to create a "Savants" cat. Can't recall what until I reread the story but I would think the "Savants" reflect the "Naturalists" of the 19th century explorers. Hence, not "Scientists" directly. However, this cat may be too small to be viable but I would put them into the latter rather than "Mages". ML4E (talk) ::In the story, the term savant is used interchangeably for the mages and the map makers and naturalists. In that world, magic and science are the same thing, so they would not make the above distinction. Even the printing press is a magical invention using the law of similarity. The people of that world probably regard mappers and naturalists as just other kinds of mages.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:33, May 14, 2018 (UTC) :::I do not recall this. I will need to verify this claim. ML4E (talk) 17:25, May 15, 2018 (UTC) Now that all the named characters in NSB have been categorised, we have 4 savants and no reason to think it will grow. Piip and Uluots are also catted as biologists, which tells all we need to know about them. Relander is a mapmaker (which might be a viable candidate for its own category), but he is more important to the story as the team member who got vampirised. That leaves Antti, a very minor character indeed, who only shows up in the story long enough to be dead. This cat is one for the deletions list.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:38, May 18, 2018 (UTC)